


A Bullet A Day Makes The Doctor Stay

by comicroute



Category: Batman (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Doctor!Tim, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-14 15:20:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8019094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comicroute/pseuds/comicroute
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tim Drake decided to drop the hero gig and study for an honorable career as a doctor, he really should have kept in mind the type of people he used to associate with. Instead of trading his illegal hobbies for a more legal method of helping people, Tim finds himself consistently breaking the law anyway when vigilantes keep dropping into the abandoned wing of his hospital in various stages of near death. He can convince himself he’s okay with it as long as they keep it to once a week because the unaccounted for medical supplies are starting to look suspicious and Tim did not become the youngest graduate with a doctorate just to get his ass thrown in jail for allegedly stealing expensive narcotics.</p><p>He especially did not drink eight cups of coffee straight during those multi-night study sessions just so he can deal with the Red Hood stopping by during his busiest shift with a bullet wound in his chest. That man can either suck up his pride and wrap himself in kevlar-fortified bubble wrap or Tim will let the triads know exactly where the guy who pissed them off is because fuck this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I did a lot of research for this fic. Including watching a very detail instructional step-by-step video on how to insert a chest tube into someone's body. Never again. Even so, I'm not a doctor and if I got anything wrong, I sincerely apologise and would love it if you could tell me so that I can correct it as soon as possible.
> 
> Getting a doctorate, let alone actually building up to doctor's status, takes an insanely long time. But we're going to take some liberties here. If Tim goes to an early college program (these do exist) at 16 and earns his AA along with his HS diploma, and then doubles his school time by quitting vigilantism and taking night classes on top of day classes, is his general workaholic self, and gets to go through only the minimum amount of time for medical residency after earning his doctorate and all that other wonderful jazz, it IS possible for Tim to end up as a full-fledged doctor in his mid-20's.
> 
> Also, these people used to work up to 105 hours a week before a law said that they can only work up to 80 hours and they have to have at least one day off (which...is still horrible). Yes, there are cots in hospitals where these people who work so hard to provide medical assistance sleep. They. Sleep. At. Their. Work. It's a struggle getting me to sleep over at a FRIEND'S house, let alone a place I work. Guess who's never becoming a doctor/nurse?
> 
> This was originally supposed to be a one-shot, until I realised that I'm almost at 20,000 words. That's sort of where I draw the line at one-shots. Chapter 2 is already mostly done, so it won't be too long until it's out.
> 
> (For those of you who follow my story One Step Closer, I haven't updated that for over a week precisely for the reason of writing this fic. You can all go blame 1223ryhs. She's giving me so many plot bunnies that I can't concentrate on OSC without going off and writing 'small' side fics. God, this was supposed to be 10,000 words less than it is).
> 
> Please enjoy, and I hope you all emerge at the other end of this fic with an huge new appreciation for our friends in scrubs!

If Gotham were a Disney character, she'd be Ursula. With her dark, towering spires and old haunting gargoyles laying watch over the city, she steals the voices of the innocent and manipulates dreams so that they’re nothing but bare skeletons of what they used to be and snakes rule the streets. Tim has no false hopes that he can change this city from that. He’s just the cleaner of collateral damage.

He’s especially reminded of that tonight. Tim must have pissed off a deity somewhere (not unlikely, considering what he’s learned about them from Diana) because he gets to work the entire weekend and into next week, starting fresh with twenty-three people caught in the fire of an apartment complex a few blocks over.

Tim gets his first real break ten hours after the start of his shift on Friday and he spends it wisely -- meaning, in the break room, with approximately three cups of coffee. Not the shitty kind, because he’s rich and smart enough not to have to resort to that, and he gets it all to himself because he’s a master at hiding the things that truly matter. He downs the scalding liquid and ignores the way it sears the back of his throat, trying to pretend the smell of the soot on his scrubs doesn’t overwhelm the rich smell of his drink.

“I don’t know how you do that,” a nurse who normally works the same rooms as him named Shawna states flatly, staring at the way the steam rises from Tim’s cup.

“Desperate times,” he responds tiredly, smoothly leaving out the ‘and a past penchant for going multiple days without sleep due to tracking down elusive assassins that may or may not exist’. Lies by omission aren’t _technically_ lies, right?

She shakes her head in disbelief as she makes her way to the schedule taped to the back of the door. Her disappointed face is one Tim can strongly relate to. He’s about to say something possibly encouraging, probably sarcastic when his phone buzzes with a call. He doesn’t want to pick it up. After all, his alibi of ‘I was working hard to save a life’ is solid and irrefutable, but his days of training with Bruce have also taught him that if someone in the 21st century decides to call instead of text, it’s probably life or death.

His assumption of life or death is correct, but when he deduces who’s calling from the wheezing on the other line he still sort of wishes he had just gone with the alibi (which is horrible, dammit, Tim you’re a _doctor)._ “1312,” Jason’s hardly discernible voice rasps, and then he hangs up.

Almost immediately, Tim’s pager beeps obnoxiously and he wants to honestly throw it at a wall (not that it will do anything -- he’s run his over with a gurney by accident and it was perfectly fine) because that’s the thirtieth this hour and the hour isn’t even over yet. Instead, he glances quickly down at it to ensure it’s not an emergency and then rushes from the room as if it were, using that as his escape plan to make it to the stairs at the end of the hall.

His anxiety for whatever Jason is calling for makes him want to use the elevator, but he’s not stupid enough. The top floors of the hospital have been abandoned for years and if he takes the elevator up there, the next person who presses the button will see the number of the floor it’s on from the digital countdown on the outside.

He takes the stairs two at a time, thanking himself for deciding to keep his workout routine from his days masquerading as Red Robin and bursts into room 1312 just in time to see Jason leaning against the sill of the open window, the floor around him soaked with rain and blood dribbling from his lips. He opens his eyes when he sees Tim and coughs, attempting to straighten up and walk either towards Tim or the sheetless bed, it’s hard to tell, when he wobbles.

Tim rushes forward, but he isn’t fast enough to prevent Jason from toppling over. “Urgh, dizzy,” the man grumbles from the floor as Tim cautiously tries to support his weight and simultaneously assess the damage. He expects that it will be hard, considering blood tends to be less visible on dark clothing, when he realises Jason isn’t wearing his costume.

Well, the helmet is beside him on the floor, but that’s about it and it’s easy to see the red bullet wound in his chest against his white t-shirt. Tim curses him out as he starts lugging him to the bed.

“What is _wrong_ with you,” he hisses, not entirely sure why he’s trying to keep his voice down. No one is going to hear them from here. “What, decide to jump in the middle of a gunfight naked?” For a vigilante, wearing street clothes doesn’t feel too much different from running around in the nude. After the first week of wearing his heavy kevlar reinforced Robin uniform, Tim had become hyperaware of how vulnerable he is while in only a t-shirt and jeans and had subconsciously defaulted to wearing thick jackets in a psychological attempt to make himself feel safer. Even replacing the kevlar with the lighter bullet proof material Dick uses for his Nightwing uniform had taken absurdly long to get comfortable in.

Tim still feels uncomfortable walking out of the house without it. He’s recently started briefly entertaining the idea of carrying a gun around on him, since he’s sworn off advanced martial arts that average doctors aren’t supposed to know and all, but the thought of wearing a gun into the hospital feels all kinds of wrong.

“Went for a ride,” Jason rasps.

“Stop talking,” Tim demands.

Jason wheezes a weak chuckle. “Wasn’t even doin’ shit. Wanted to go get coffee, but I lost my...regular helmet so I…”

Tim can’t help it. “You wore your Red Hood helmet while in your civilian identity for _coffee?”_ he exclaims, staring at Jason laying on the bed. Though, maybe Tim shouldn’t be the one to talk. He’d do just about anything for coffee too.

Jason passes out before he can respond and that’s how Tim remembers there’s a bullet wound in his chest and shit, shit, shit.

* * *

Due to lack of equipment (and pre-surgery time crunch) in the abandoned hospital wing, Tim has to forgo the prophylaxis and ET, though an educated guess tells him Jason won’t be in need of an ET tube or ventilator and he’s not willing to risk pneumonia, DVT, PE, or any of the other various and numerous risks associated with ET tubes for a just-in-case. Instead, Tim immediately installs the IV. He takes a chest tube that he has stashed in a small supply closet down the hall (situations like this really aren’t as uncommon as they should be) out as well as a chest tray and disinfects everything as quickly as he can, stripping Jason and sterilising his skin as well as anesthetizing his tissue to ensure he won’t wake up. He has no time to inject other antibacterials due to the presumed urgency of the situation and decides to postpone it until the surgery with the bullet, inserting and positioning the tube.

Tim staunches the blood flow from the bullet wound as best he can in order to risk the trip back to the supply closet to locate the right blood bag (thankfully, Tim has almost every vigilante’s blood type memorised from the hours he’s had to spend pouring over Batman’s files on them). There’s a voice in the back of his head nagging at him, telling him that there’s a high possibility something in Jason’s blood cells could have been affected due to his resurrection because Batman’s files are surprisingly no longer up-to-date, but there’s no scientific proof so Tim has to ignore that voice in favour of speed because without an x-ray, it’s scary how uncertain he is as to Jason’s state. The chest tube was already a necessary gamble.

After hooking up him to more blood, Tim feels secure enough to take the time to disinfect his backup surgical equipment and check for exit wounds. There isn’t one, so he takes the time to run downstairs and collect tetanus booster and immunoglobulin shots. He isn’t sure if Jason ever got vaccinated before his death, he doubts it unless Bruce took him to get it (which Tim is hard pressed to believe -- if anyone was paying attention to Jason’s medical records, it had to be Alfred) but he’s also unsure of how his resurrection affected any vaccinations he’s had, mainly because no one is certain how the Lazarus Pit works. If it’s supposed to cure all wounds and illnesses, and technically vaccines are small injections of the disease in order to adapt the immune system, then it’s entirely possible all progress with past vaccines could have been reversed. Unfortunately, there’s no time for the full five shot tetanus vaccine procedure, so he settles for injecting the booster before starting to cautiously dig around for the bullet.

Jason is still out, but the pain isn’t likely to wake him up for a little while longer due to the low oxygen content in his system coupled with his low blood pressure, both of which result from an injured lung and must have been the cause for his loss of consciousness. Still, Tim moves as swiftly as possible. Waking a near-death vigilante up due to random bursts of pain caused by sharp objects is never a combination that can be expected to go well.

The bullet didn’t severely injure Jason’s lung, hitting the very edge judging by the location of its path. It’s .45 caliber, but assuming from the length it managed to travel into Jason’s chest, it was shot from very far away, which may also account for the single bullet wound instead of the multiple that Tim is used to (Jason must have dodged, and a small cover is sufficient enough as defense from a shooter a long distance away). Once Tim has removed the bullet, he thoroughly cleans the wound before stitching it up, cleaning it again, and then injecting the tetanus immunoglobulin shot. He briefly entertains adding a shot of rocephin but then decides that it isn’t necessary, especially since taking too many antibacterials or antibiotics from the supply room on the main floor is bound to be noticed. He takes a bottle of the antibiotics he’s stashed in the drawers upstairs instead, setting it on the table beside Jason’s head along with a glass of water.

He wants to stay, make absolute sure that Jason’s stable, possibly bring a real heart monitor and everything into the room to monitor his progress, but then his pager beeps at him incessantly again and he has to concede to the emergency demand. His real job takes precedence this time.

When Tim finds a spare moment around 1AM to climb back up the stairs, he discovers that the pills he had set aside are gone and the glass of water is completely drained. Jason is still there, asleep.

Tim never makes it to his penthouse in the Upper East Side. It’s a decent distance from the hospital located in Newtown but not that bad by car without the morning traffic. Still, he’s already worked overtime due to a shortage of staff in the ER and his next ‘shift’ starts in five hours, not that that matters in any way because he’s on call the entire time until then, so he doesn’t leave the hospital that night. He just goes to the staff lounge downstairs after checking Jason as best he can in the haze of sleep deprivation, pulls out a cot, and is out like a light.

His pager wakes him up three hours later for a question so frustratingly minor that Tim wants to scream, but the limitations of the beeping device still force him to move from his cot in order to find a phone and respond to the call number’s question after nearly falling asleep standing up while waiting for the call to connect. He manages to sleep for the two more hours he has until his shift starts, and then it’s his time to shine, blurry eyed and hating life just a little bit.

An hour into his shift, Tim finds another spare moment to check on Jason. This time, the former Boy Wonder is awake and playing on his phone. He doesn’t glance up when Tim opens the door. “Hey, you got an Android charger?”

“Probably,” says Tim, knowing that there’s probably a million in the lounge, but still unwilling to find someone else’s. He can’t remember if he brought his.

“Cool, because I’m gonna need one soon,” answers Jason, flicking his eyes up briefly to watch Tim cross over to the IV. “What time is it?”

“Sometime around 7AM.” Tim wants to ask Jason how he’s feeling, but it feels a little out of place now that they’ve already started a jerky conversation. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”

Jason snorts and gestures to his side at where the chest tube exits, putting his phone face down in his lap. “Where do you think I’m gonna go with this thing inside of me? Also, aren’t docs supposed to ask my permission first before sticking weird tubes and shit everywhere?”

“I figured you wouldn’t sue me, considering it would be on the basis of being in a hospital illegally to begin with. Speaking of which, if you got shot in your civilian identity, you do realise you could have just walked into the hospital through an actual door?”

Jason shrugs. “Forgot to get a new ID.”

The conversation is too normal, too mundane for the two of them. Strictly restrained, ignoring all their history for the sake of civil small talk. Tim hates it while simultaneously appreciating it. The last thing he needs right now is a pointless argument over things long past. His patience is wearing thin as it is. Jason eyes him as he changes the blood bag. “Do you ever leave this place?” he scoffs. It’s supposed to be a joke, and it makes Tim give the most unamused snort he can muster.

“No.”

Jason raises an eyebrow. Tim doesn’t even look at him. “Guess I kept you late, huh?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says dryly.

“I came in at 11. You poor thing, must be exhausted. Not running around in tights anymore, right? You managed to become the only one of us who isn’t nocturnal, congrats.”

Tim rolls his eyes, but doesn’t say anything to correct him. At least, he isn’t planning on it, but Jason just keeps going.

“I guess you don’t get shot at much anymore, either. No Bats breathing down your neck, a stable job, no double life without any sleep, a comfy, cozy house and probably real friends. Sounds like the life,” he mutters. Tim wonders if he’s the only one who would think he sounds bitter. “So how about you just take this dumb tube out and go home, I’m a big boy now. I can take care of myself.”

“Must be why I’m the only reason you’re still alive,” Tim comments.

“You did your job, doc.”

“And I’ll continue to do it, if you don’t mind.” Tim hates it when vigilantes routinely fall through the windows into the hospital and automatically expect him to fix them up, but, well, that’s not exactly out of the norm considering his career choice.

Jason narrows his eyes at him, which prompts Tim to continue before he can check himself into not running his mouth. “Also, that attitude? I’m used to it. Get a lot of patients here who don’t necessarily like to cooperate. So how about you suck it up, take two more of those pills, and get some rest until I decide to release you.”

Jason snorts, a look of surprise flitting over his features. “Looks like you got an attitude of your own.”

“It’s called sleep deprivation. I don’t know what your views on my lifestyle is and, frankly, I don’t want to know, but I’m almost positive I get less sleep now than I did jumping off rooftops in underwear, so save me the macho big guy drug lord spiel and just sit here nice and quiet for me because your decision to illegally welcome yourself into an abandoned hospital wing means whatever I decide to do isn’t up to approval by the judge,” Tim states matter-of-factly, finishing his check up and turning to go out the door before Jason has time to react.

So as it turns out, he might be just a little bit cranky. Personally, Tim considers it justified.

(Also, he could totally take the chest tube out now, but if it’s the only thing keeping Jason to that bed, well. The infuriating bastard may be a criminal overlord, but Tim firmly believes that hospitals are strictly neutral grounds and yes, that applies to infamous anti-heroes).

He waits a few more hours before returning and removing the tube, patching up the incision. If he happens to knock Jason out into a medically induced temporary coma too, no one has to know.

* * *

Tim’s view on the world can be a little pessimistic at times, but if there’s one good fact concerning humanity that he knows he can always rely on, it’s this:

Leslie Thompkins is a god-damn _blessing._

“Oh, no, no, no, you are going _home!”_ the lady in question exclaims, pushing Tim right out the door of her free clinic.

“I heard you were calling for volunteers--”

“From people with nothing better to do!”

“Trust me, I _don’t_ have anything better to do--”

“Honey,” she says suddenly, switching from pushing him away to pulling him in close by his shoulders to look him right in the eyes. “I’m a doctor, and I’ve been a doctor for longer than you’ve been alive. I know that when God grants you a day off, you take a day off.”

Tim tries to give her the most pitying, charming, pathetic smile he can muster. “I don’t know how to take a day off.”

She opens her mouth, but Tim is sure that she’s spent enough time with Bruce to realise that he’s being completely serious because she promptly shuts it and gives him the least venomous glare he’s possibly ever received in his life. Leslie finally hangs her head, tuts, and begins shuffling him back inside her clinic. “Honestly, what is that man teaching you kids? And here I thought you, out of all of them, could finally get a nice girlfriend or boyfriend, maybe a few kids, maybe bring them around some time--”

Tim rolls his eyes but can’t help the fond smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he walks away from the gentle pressure of her hand on his back and makes his way to the reception area, already beginning to look for the medical files of whoever has just been admitted, letting her chatter behind him. Leslie is nothing if not organised, even if her clinic nestled deep in the corners of the Narrows may not look like much. He isn’t putting much effort into the search, considering he has no way to tell what is where. He knows Leslie is going to place something in his hands if he just looks like he’s making an effort.

“--but, I must admit, it’s nice to have some help around here. Especially from a real doctor. There’s only one of me, after all. Oh, the neighbourhood women who lend a hand are so kind, but one nearly put rubbing alcohol into an IV and-- oh, sweetheart, I know just what you can do for me.”

When Leslie wants to put someone to work, she really puts them to work. Tim gets a free pass on manual labour for being one of the few trained doctors in the clinic at the moment, but she has him running between rooms in no time. Apparently she’s had her hands full with a new strand of the influenza virus that has knocked the children of the Bowery down, and there’s a few children, almost infants really, who haven’t been faring with it well. Children aren’t Tim’s forte, so she leaves him with the adults and teens.

“Hi, so I have some news you might not like…”

The file in Tim’s hands names the terrified looking kid in front of him as Cameron Davis. Tim doesn’t think he’s that scary, but maybe eleven year olds from the Narrows have a knack for sensing who can flatten them on their ass (which would be, yes, the unassuming, slightly nerdy looking doctor). It wouldn’t be a surprise, considering what he knows about one Jason Todd.

“...but first, what’s your favourite colour?”

Cameron blinks, mouth slightly parted and eyebrows narrowed in suspicion. “Uh, blue…?”

“That sounds like a question. Sorry buddy, but I’m supposed to be the one asking the questions here,” Tim teases as lightly as possible. Cameron doesn’t seem to understand it. Well, that’s what Tim gets for trying to be kid-friendly. He sighs when Cameron continues to look vaguely afraid. “I asked because you’re going to need to pick out a colour for your cast,” he hints.

The fear morphs into horror. “No!” Cameron exclaims, jumping from the bed and gingerly clutching his arm. “No, I don’t need a cast, I can just not move it, right? But no cast. I can’t wear a cast.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to,” Tim says as gently as possible, because Cameron looks about ready to burst into tears. This is why he’s not a pediatrician.

“No! I--”

“Cameron,” Tim interrupts, moving forward slowly, placatingly, sitting on the bed beside where Cameron was sitting earlier. The boy is still standing, holding his arm and staring at the ground. “Can I call you that?” When he gets no answer, he continues anyway. “A cast is to make sure your bone heals correctly. You have a broken bone. Us doctors call it a spiral fracture. Do you know what that means?”

Cameron looks up him and down, scooting slightly away. “Tommy got a broken bone, just had to wear a sling. Why can’t I do that?”

“If you sit down, I’ll tell you exactly why.”

He doesn’t look any more pleased, but at least he cooperates, sitting on the edge of the cot with a good two feet of space between him and Tim. In response, Tim produces the x-ray photos (and thank god for Bruce’s money, really, because otherwise he has no idea how Leslie would have gotten all of her equipment). “See here? There are three main bones in your arm. Two in the forearm, which is the part below your elbow, and one called the humerus, which is above your elbow but under your shoulder. Normally, when you break one of the two bones below the elbow, you always wear a cast. When you break the humerus, you don’t always wear a cast because it’s easier to keep it there with a sling. I’m guessing Tommy had something called a greenstick fracture in the humerus, which is really, really small. He wouldn’t need a cast for that.”

Cameron looks confused, but at least he’s listening. Tim will take what he can get. “Okay…” the boy says softly. He nods jerkily at the photo, to the obvious line in the upper arm. “But I got a crack above my elbow. Why do I need a cast?”

“Because your crack is worse than Tommy’s. It’s called a spiral fracture. But you’re only going to need to wear a cast between 1 to 3 weeks. If you really take care of it and it heals great, then you can take it off after 7 days. That’s not too bad. Then all you’ll need is an arm brace.” He tries to sound reassuring, but the kid does not look reassured. God, how does Leslie do it?

“A brace?” Cameron exclaims, eyes wide.

Tim decides to just go make the cast and get it over with. He quickly deflects. “Yes. So, what happened anyway?” he asks absentmindedly, not really listening as he begins searching through Leslie’s cabinets. He really has no idea where anything is. It’s like searching for a cup in Wayne Manor. No one is allowed in the kitchen for a reason. Besides, how was he supposed to know which cup was for tea, which was for guests, which was for regular dinner, and which was fine for him to use? They all looked the same.

“One of the guys pushed me off my skateboard,” Cameron says quickly, bitterly.

“Oh,” says Tim, pausing to look at Cameron. The boy is staring right back at him. Surprised by the intense eye contact, he returns to rifling through the cabinets. An hour later, Tim reluctantly releases the boy and watches him leave before walking out into the reception area in search of Leslie. He doesn’t find her, but he does find her unlocked computer and that’s what he needed from her anyway, so he retrieves the files he’s looking for and returns to rotating through the rooms, tucking the printed pages into the backpack he brought along.

Eventually, hours pass and the day is over and Leslie has had enough of him. The night is cold and dark when she opens the door to her clinic and nudges him out. “You’ve helped enough for a lifetime, sweetie,” she says fondly, as if she didn’t just gently kick him out onto the street. “You need more sleep. Don’t think I don’t know about your nightly activities.” She really is a sweet lady, though the goosebumps over Tim’s arms are having a hard time remembering that. Why did he decide to stay so late again? Something about helping out of the goodness of his heart? Right.

“Oh? Like my coffee binges? Sorry, not even rehab can fix that one,” Tim quips.

She smiles, but still shakes her head. Tim pauses, bemused. “Bruce told me a thing or two about your tendency to help out our mutual friends.”

He’s not surprised. “First of all, not my choice. They drop in totally uninvited. And last I checked, you weren’t exactly averse to giving out free help to masks,” Tim corrects, leaning against his car and shoving his hands into his pockets with a pointed look at Leslie.

“Well, Lord knows I don’t mind the competition for saving half-dead heroes. But I think it fair to warn you that he’s not so happy about _which_ of those half-dead heroes you’ve decided to fix up. Now, I support you one-hundred percent, as you know I would do the same thing, and I’ve been worried since he stopped dropping by. But you also know how Bruce can get, seeing everyone’s actions as motives we never intend for them to be,” Leslie says softly, wrapping her cardigan tighter around her shoulders. The chilly air smells like past rain. “Watch yourself out there. Just because you’ve shucked the mask doesn’t mean you’re no longer involved. Gotham has a hard time letting bygones go.”

* * *

There are pros and cons to having the training of an assassin with the job of an average doctor:

On one hand, Tim can’t whip out in the impressive martial arts he is absolutely capable of every time someone decides to bother him. It would make his job significantly easier, but it also probably violates some sort of agreement hidden somewhere within the system, so it might be better if he doesn’t. On the other hand, he has the excuse of having taken ridiculous amounts of anatomy classes to explain why he knows the locations of _hundreds_ of pressure points on the human body.

“I thought there’s only like, ten,” Shawna says, unimpressed as she sips her tea.

“First of all, how are you using that to stay awake? Doesn’t tea make you tired? Second of all, there’s easily over four hundred.”

“Sure there is. And _good_ tea makes you tired. Good tea doesn’t come in styrofoam cups,” she responds, looking down at her cup in disdain.

Tim drops the subject on pressure points, already having decided that he’ll use one of the minor ones on her tomorrow. There’s one under the armpit that he knows will just numb her arm for a little while. That sounds like fun. “Maybe you should have become a naturopath. Probably pays better than a nurse.” Not that Tim knows. He’s never been interested in the natural voodoo stuff since he’s found out magic actually exists, courtesy of one Zatanna Zatara. He can’t even trust history books anymore. Who knows if the Salem Witch Trials had some truth to them or not? For all he knows, naturopathy is a hoax and the real healing culprits are undercover witches. After all, witches dressed as measly fortune tellers is too cliche to be true.

Shawna snorts. “ _Anything_ pays better than a nurse. My ex has a better paycheck than me. He’s a car mechanic. He never even went to college.”

“Then just join forces with the teachers. Demand reform. Viva la revolution and all that. Behead the president and maybe they’ll actually listen.”

She glares, but it has no venom. Tim considers it a win and takes that win out of the staff lounge with him.

He’ll never admit it out loud, but the last week has been a lot more calm than he’d been hoping for. Since Jason had booked it out of the hospital hours after Tim had taken out the chest tube, the only person to drop by has been Cass, and that’s mainly because she had wanted to check up on him instead of the other way around (although, she did have gash in her leg that she hadn’t even noticed until the blood got on the floor). As it turns out, at the time of Jason’s unfortunate incident, no one in Gotham had known that he was back in Gotham. Apparently, Jason had become a master at avoiding Oracle’s surveillance, but being injured had driven that caution straight out of him and she had found out about Jason while he was on his way to the hospital.

True to Leslie’s warning, now Bruce is one hundred percent convinced that Tim and Jason are in some way working together, and Tim is unsure of whether he wants to strangle Bruce or Jason. His relationship after-death with Jason was a haze of murderous intent and agreed upon truce for mutual benefit, and now Tim is somehow buddy-buddy with a drug-lord-mafia-boss-vigilante-serial-killer and he _seriously_ needs to move. He’s heard Metropolis is nice this time of year.

Despite all that, physical appearances have been limited. An entire week without Tim needing to rush to clandestinely save someone’s life. It’s practically a holiday.

Somehow, Tim has found himself hoping for Jason’s reappearance. But it isn’t in the way that he normally hopes for someone to show up. He has other motives and maybe, just maybe, there are some grounds to Bruce’s paranoia. Because while Tim has sworn off vigilantism, his costume nestled snugly in a glass case deep within the Batcave to prove it, that doesn’t mean he’s suddenly become blind to the crimes of the world.

After almost two weeks go by, Tim decides that he’s had enough. It could also be that he’s on his second night in a row of sleeping in the hospital and cots will never be comfortable, but at least the only person he’ll get the chance to be snappy to, if all goes according to plan, is Jason. Tim doubts he’ll ever feel guilty for being snappy towards Jason. He takes out his phone and types out a text message quicker than he can second-guess himself.

_< <How great are your persuasion skills with Hood?_

Barbara’s reply is immediate. >> _Depends on what I’m persuading with._

_< <Me. Hospital. Same room. One hour._

_> >Should I ask?_

_< <No._

_> >Fair enough._

Yeah, he doesn’t sound suspicious at all. If Barbara shows these messages to Bruce, Tim is so screwed. He drops his head back onto his cot with a groan.

* * *

“I thought you had a knack for punctuality,” comes the irritating, very unnerving, electronic voice as Tim opens the door into room 1312. He had decided an hour ago that he would not come up early to sit and wait like a lost puppy for the vigilante to show, he has better things to do, so he’s evidently a few minutes late. The feeling is both embarrassing and somewhat prideful. He’s never late and there’s a type of satisfaction to keep Jason waiting after all the emotional stress he’s put Tim through.

“I thought you had a knack for bleeding out all over the floor, but I guess there’s a first time for everything,” Tim quips in response, locking the door behind him and moving further into the room. Jason is turned to face him, or at least his body is because it’s hard to tell his face when he’s wearing the helmet, one leg propped on the sill and the other left hanging. One of his elbows is resting lazily on his knee.

“Touche. So, did the good doctor feel the need to have a check up? Because don’t worry, I only busted my stitches once.”

“No,” says Tim, his stance bold and unrelenting as he marches directly up to the Red Hood. For how casual Jason likes to come across, Tim isn’t an idiot. He can see the way he tenses up, body coiled and ready to spring, leg poised to raise and kick Tim away, body angled so that the force would simultaneously take him out the window in a smooth escape. Tim misses the way people used to react to him when they know his skills are on par with theirs, and the reminder now is thrilling. “I need something from you.”

Jason is utterly still for a heartbeat of a moment. “Well, at least you’re honest.” There’s something there Tim can’t place with the electronic buzz obscuring his words. “But I don’t do favours for free. Now, what can a good doctor like you give a bad boy like me?”

“It’s not a favour. It’s something I think you’ll be interested in by itself. Mutual benefit.” He displays the file in front of his face, and when Jason moves forward, he angles it slightly away. “A case.”

That metal face is motionless, calculating. Tim doesn’t let it unnerve him, even if he knows that he doesn’t have the benefit of hiding his emotions behind a mask. By now he’s perfected his poker face. “Oh, so you’re too noble now to do the work yourself? You want me to take out the garbage for you, is that it?”

“If I remember, that’s what you do anyway.”

A robotic scoff. “Either you’re in this life or you’re out. Don’t start playing in grey, doc. You and the rest of the Bats know that grey areas aren’t really my style. Hire vigilantes and you’re no better than the rest of us.”

“I’m not hiring you,” Tim declares, stepping even closer. He can feel the frustration bubbling up. How does he explain this to someone who doesn’t care about explanations? “I’m doing this _because_ I’m a doctor. I pledged my life to save lives. To help people. But trading in my mask doesn’t suddenly make me blind. I’m stuck in these rooms day in, day out. I’ve seen evil in action, just like the rest of you. But unlike the rest of you, I’ve seen the cracks in between, too. I’ve seen the little people that get lost in the shadows that the big players cast, the ones no one looks for or listens to and I’ve seen them die completely anonymous.

“You’re so busy chasing after big name drug lords, serial killers, public figures that you forget about who it is you’re supposed to be protecting. I can’t. Not when I see them come back, over and over, for me to patch up, just to let them out to get hurt _again._ I’m not giving this to you as Tim. I’m not giving this to you as Red Robin, I’m not even giving this to you as your partner. I’m giving this to you as a doctor. And as a doctor, I have one rule.”

He wishes he could look Jason in the eyes, to send the message home, but he can’t so he does the next best thing and drifts into silence in order to stare into the holes of the helmet where the eyes should be. “No one dies.”

As expected, Hood instantly laughs. It’s a grating, mocking thing. “That’s not your choice to decide. You give me a case and the case is mine. _I_ decide what I want to do with it. You know that the second I get a name, you’re not in control of shit. If that’s your rule, go to one of the damn Bats. I’m not wasting my time.” He turns to leave.

“I chose you because it’s in your territory.” Jason pauses at that. “It’s your turf. It’s your people. Maybe the others can’t grasp the idea of boundaries, but I like to respect borders. Plus, as I said, the others are too busy to remember about the little guy. But for all you do, chasing triads and annihilating entire mobs, I don’t think you ever forgot.” Tim doesn’t say _why,_ but Jason knows. Of course he knows. “You also have to know that big names are easy to catch wind of. But no one hears about what happens to people behind closed doors when those people are silent. You have no way to help the people you want without any clue or resources, so you go after the cause of part of the problem and hope it’s enough. I’m standing here, risking my job and my career, violating laws because I’m trying to give you the resources to do what no one else can be bothered with.”

There’s a tiny part of Tim that says he chose Jason in order give him a _chance._ He tries to push that part away from his thoughts.

“Okay,” Jason finally says, slowly dropping the leg propped on the sill so that he can stand up to his full height. “What do you got for me?” It seems like the agreement is hard for him, but there’s a sense of pride that blossoms in Tim which he struggles not to show on his face, one that declares victory.

“Cameron Davis,” says Tim, unfaltering in the face of the height Jason has on him. He opens the file and turns it to Jason for him to take. “He came into Leslie’s clinic while I was volunteering a couple weeks ago with a spiral fracture in his arm. He told me it was from falling off a skateboard, but spiral fractures aren’t caused by only falls. They’re caused by pressure added to a pivotal movement, such as the body twisting while the arm remains in place. Or, the arm twisting while the body remains in place.”

“He lied.”

“That’s what I thought, too. So I searched up his medical files. Look for yourself.”

He knows exactly what’s in those files. He’s spent hours looking over them, matching them to his theories. Burns, past breaks, cuts and other injuries at various stages of healing. To the untrained eye, the scalding marks from hot water may be looked over, but there’s a specific burn mark there that Tim is sure anyone can pick up on. He knows Jason has seen it when the pages crinkle under his gloved fingers. “That looks like a clothing iron.”

Tim doesn’t grace him with an answer. “I don’t have the jurisdiction to look into police files, and I told Babs when I hung up the cowl that I didn’t want her to give me access anymore. But I bet you’ll find a clue in there with the parents.”

The file is shut so quickly that Tim can feel the displaced air sweep over his arms. But Jason’s head remains angled at his hands. He’s avoiding facing Tim.

“He was scared to death when I told him he had to wear a cast,” adds Tim, quietly. “I don’t think he’s going to keep it on. And even if that were the only thing I was afraid of, it would be enough.”

“You’re right. I’ll take it,” Jason finally rumbles, before turning away and moving swiftly for the window.

“Jason,” Tim calls, before Jason has the chance to jump. “Only one rule.”

He’s expecting Jason to say something like ‘no promises’ or ‘sayonara, sucker’ but instead, the man only gives him a curt nod before he’s gone.

* * *

 

 Tim thinks it’s a cruel twist of irony when a few hours later, a man named Robert Davis is being submitted into his care with all of his limbs broken, a concussion, and severe burns throughout his body. He actually cringes when he begins making the casts, unwilling to help this man and there’s a spike in his heart that might be fear because he shouldn’t feel this way.

When he was still a vigilante, he knew he would prevent bad men from dying but would never go out of his way to help them, so it shouldn’t be a surprise, but as a doctor he’s been blissfully able to ignore a criminal record in order to do one singular job without all the moral decisions of justice and grey areas. It’s the biggest blessing he could have been given with his new life, but now his old one is rearing its ugly head and he wishes he could just do his job without this horrible feeling in his chest that demands punishment. The feeling ebbs somewhat when he peels away the man’s shirt and discovers a burn in the shape of a clothing iron on his right side, but it doesn’t make Tim feel like less of a terrible human being. He just can’t figure out if he feels that way because he doesn’t want to help this man, or if it’s because he’s helping him at all.

Jason doesn’t show up that night or the next, but he does drop in at the crack of dawn on the second day, and he doesn’t do it in the abandoned sector. Tim nearly jumps out of his skin when he walks into the room of a sleeping teenage girl currently battling bronchitis to see the Red Hood lounging casually against the uncomfortable armchair, flicking through the television channels.

“You know that if anyone but me saw you, you’d be accused of stalking, right?” Tim blurts, frustrated and cranky, gesturing pointedly to the sleeping girl. He knows for a fact that she’s had a hard day, and the last thing Tim wants right now is for her to wake up to see a murderous vigilante at her bedside.

“You’re her doctor and you rotate rooms every two hours,” Jason says matter-of-factly.

Why is he even surprised? Tim takes a deep breath as Jason’s interest seems to be claimed by some sort of cartoon, although he’s sure that Jason isn’t actually paying attention to the TV at all. “Thank you,” he says finally.

Jason flicks the TV off. “For what?” he says flippantly. He’s trying to milk the answer out of Tim and really, how did Tim ever think he _wasn’t_ irritating? His opinion right now could be heavily influenced by his own sleep deprivation, though.

“For not killing anyone.”

Jason hums noncommittally, rising to his feet and moving to cross his arms against the wall. Tim moves over to join him, casting a paranoid glance at the girl. He gave her a sleeping aid not too long ago, but he doesn’t want to risk it. He leans against the wall next to Jason, turned to face him. “It’s what the doc ordered.”

And Tim...Tim can’t help it. He snorts a laugh, and Jason must be surprised because the angle of his head twitches just slightly towards him. “That was horrible.”

“A term to describe me.”

Tim shrugs. “I don’t think so. You know, Bats seems to make you out to be a loose cannon, but I don’t see it. Not being able to and choosing not to are different.”

A mocking scoff. “Isn’t choosing to kill people worse _?”_

“But it means you can also choose _not_ to.”

“I can also choose to stop smoking. Doesn’t mean I _want_ to quit the nicotine.”

“Addictions can be overcome.”

Jason pushes off from the wall, fully straightening up and shifting to plant one hand against the wall so that he’s half boxing Tim in. He isn’t, not really, he isn’t even looming over Tim, but the factor is still there. “Is that it, then? You trying to get me to choose the light, be like the rest of them? Save me like I’m one of your patients? Thanks, but no thanks. I came to let you know the job is done, not become your pet-project for redemption.” The window is on the other side of Tim, so Jason has to cross in front of Tim to reach it and Tim takes the opportunity to press a hand against his chest, stalling him.

“You’re not a project,” he says. “And you’re definitely not like the rest of them. I know a thing or two about refusing to follow those footsteps. Maybe on the completely opposite end of the spectrum from you, but you’re not alone in that.”

But Jason doesn’t stop until he reaches the window, bracing his fingers against the panel and seconds from falling out. “Haven't you realised by now, doc? In the end, we’re all alone.”

* * *

From there, it’s not hard. Definitely not as hard as it should be.

It isn’t for another few weeks until Tim finds another case, though this one is more stumbled upon than found by any detective work. A young woman, late teens to early twenties, is found lying alone in an alley outside of a brothel, the clothes on her upper body torn off and bruises discolouring her baby-round face, blossoming down her arms and sides, marks in the shape of fingers encircling her neck. Three ribs are fractured and her ankle is sprained. She has a grade 3 concussion and although she knows who the president is, every time Tim asks her for her apartment number she gives him a different answer.

But she certainly remembers what happened.

Before she woke up, Tim had spent the entire time treating her with the sensation of vomit at the back of his throat. Her shirt was completely gone, torn and discarded, only wearing a skirt and bra when she had been wheeled into the ER. Her makeup was smudged and ugly, smearing into her blood matted hair and he stared as Shawna washed it, trying not to imagine the worst but having a hard time not to when presented with the evidence.

Her name is Chelsea Higgins and she’s a prostitute.

“No, no...they didn’t-- no…,” she murmurs tiredly, and Tim can see the disorientation in her eyes. She’s not amnesiac, not severely anyway, and her full memory is likely to restore in a few hours. It’s the best he can ask for. Her concussion is bad, and he wants to keep the police at bay for as long as possible but he knows from experience how important it is to get information before a trial goes cold. Too bad the doctor side of him just wants this poor woman to rest.

“They didn’t rape you?” Tim clarifies, the crude wording awkward but relief just a second from flooding his chest.

She tries to shake her head but winces, and Tim habitually jerks forward as if he can somehow ease the pain. “No, they...but they touched. You know, they…they didn’t pay.” Chelsea folds into herself despite her ribs. “Can I have a bath…?”

“I’ll call one of the nurses,” Tim says gently. He wasn’t supposed to ask questions at all, but hopefully telling it once will make it easier for Chelsea to explain it to the police.

The thing is, thirty minutes later Tim overhears the police say how the trial has already gone cold, but Tim also hasn’t seen them get in their cars. They haven’t even tried. Because despite being ambushed, attacked, beaten, robbed, and molested, Chelsea was _not_ raped. After all, working in a brothel -- what did she expect? She was asking for to be molested, wasn’t she?

Tim wants to puke. He goes back into the room a few hours later and softly pries the information from Chelsea, the facts that the police hadn’t even bothered receiving. The facts that her attackers -- two -- are regulars, which she remembers after another few hours of rest and treatment. But she won’t tell him when they come around, won’t tell him anything else. Instead, she only asks: “Don’t tell ‘em. Not the cops. Business...johns won’t come ‘round no more if they think the cops be pokin’ into things. I need...need this job. Promise. No cops.”

Barbara says nothing when he asks for her to contact the Red Hood.

When Jason shows up, he’s in full gear head-to-toe and he has an unlit cigarette dangling between his fingers when Tim walks in. He looks ready to light it, until Tim hands the files over, the small folder flipped open to the working girl’s face. “Her name is Chelsea Higgins.”

The Hood turns his head to regard the photograph lazily, but it’s only once he sees the photograph that he reacts. His entire body stiffens, lighter half-raised, before he tucks the cigarette and lighter back into his belt in seconds. He grabs the files and goes straight to the list of sustained injuries. “Where is she?” he demands, his synthetic voice oddly flat. It’s hard to tell whether his real voice is flat or the helmet made it that way. It’s like the helmet pulls the feeling from his voice, every word getting filtered through that sheet of metal to come out sounding leeched of emotion, pulled and shaken and strained of anything to hint at his thoughts. A face to show who he’s trying to become to cover the face of the person he used to be.

“Downstairs.” Tim tries not to let the alarm show on his face when Jason tosses the file onto the abandoned bed and promptly takes off his helmet along with the mask underneath. He unbuckles his utility belt and throws that onto the bed along with the file and his firearms, followed by his gun holsters. He even strips off the bulkiest of his armour, especially what’s visible on his legs, and zips up his leather jacket to hide the rest of it. “What are you doing?” Tim exclaims as Jason pushes past him for the door.

“Going downstairs.”

Wide-eyed, Tim scrambles after him, remembering to close the door behind them. He doesn’t exactly want to be seen with Jason in case something looks suspicious, though, and runs down the stairwell but still waits a few seconds after Jason has opened the door to the first floor before following.

Jason is opening the door to every room in search of the right one. Tim is just lucky they’re not in one of the busier corridors, because running into a nurse right now would not be ideal. He catches Jason’s elbow before he can open the next one and waits until Jason looks at him before nodding for him to follow and leading him down the halls.

Tim gets a weird glance from Holden at the reception desk but no one bothers them, although Tim’s heart still feels like a jackrabbit at the fact that Red Hood is in his place of work, in public, with only a zipper to protect his identity.

Reckless asshole.

They make it to Chelsea’s room and Tim locks the door behind them, deciding to loiter back and watch the scene unfold. He doesn’t think Jason will try further traumatising a heavily concussed assault and battery victim, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure.

When Jason approaches the woman, he approaches on the opposite side from the door in order to avoid the large machine on the other. It makes it so that when he looks down at her, Tim is able to see his face, and Tim is momentarily stunned by the fact that this is the first time he has seen Jason’s entire face in person.

High cheekbones set in a pale, angular, hard set face with thin lips, a slightly crooked nose, and thin eyebrows. Tim can’t see his eye colour from here but he knows what it is -- a steel grey-blue to match a cloudy day. There are streaks of dirt against his jaw, the skin under his eyes slick with lack of sleep. He reaches up with fingers permanently stained by petroleum to brush the hair away from Chelsea’s face.

“Hey, Cherry?” he mumbles. The heart monitor shows that she’s awake, possibly just drifting on the edge of unconsciousness, but her eyes open at the sound of Jason’s voice. She smiles a crooked-toothed grin.

“Jay?” Chelsea rasps, and Tim is finding it hard to believe that they know each other, but he really shouldn’t. He starts to wonder how, but remembers that Chelsea works in a brothel and, well. Men have needs, don’t they? Tim figures it’s hard to keep a real relationship when you’re also a part time avenging angel from hell. “Wow, hi… How’d you know I’m here?”

Jason smiles but gives no answer, and it’s a type of smile Tim hasn’t seen before on that face, one that throws his mind for a loop. “I want to know who did this to you.”

Chelsea frowns. “I… y’know I can’t. You’ll go after ‘im, won’tcha? Mark said he don’t wantcha ‘round there no more.”

“He’ll never see me. No one will know.” He continues brushing the girl’s hair. It seems to relax her.

She squeezes her eyes shut for a few minutes, as if in pain, and she probably is. There are a lot of things that could be causing her pain right now, and Tim is about to move forward, tell Jason to go, that she needs to recover in peace, when she finally decides to speak. “It was just the boys… Max and Jeremy. You know them… they like to cause trouble, but. Promise you won’t make a scene? Business, y’know how it is, they--”

“I promise.” His word is enough. She smiles at him again. “I have to go, but I’ll be back to visit when you wake up. And I’ll bring pie.”

That sparks a little bit of life back into her. She sits up just the smallest bit that she’s capable of with her busted ribs. “Now, what _kind_ a pie?”

“The old-fashioned cheesecake you like, straight from the bakery on the corner of Pine. You know that one, next to GameStop?”

“You’re kidding,” she gasps. “I haven’t had that since Johnny brought me ‘round.”

“You. Me. A whole cheesecake. You just have to close your eyes.”

“You’re somethin’ else, Jay,” Chelsea says fondly, laying her head back deeper into the pillows. “I’m holdin’ you to it. Don’t forget.”

“No ma’am.” Jason actually winks, pulling away from the bed and giving her a two-fingered salute. “Goodnight.”

“Night!”

Tim doesn’t even protest when Jason tugs him out of the room with him. “I didn’t know you went to brothels,” he blurts, because that’s all he can think of to say and he seriously needs a filter.

Jason actually looks shocked. It baffles Tim, makes him almost miss the fact that Jason has spoken because he is so used to seeing a blank, metal face that watching the face behind that metal contort into real expressions with real emotions is a disorienting experience. Tim can actually _hear_ the feelings in Jason’s voice for once, the inflection uniquely _him_ broadcasting what is normally lost behind the helmet. “What are you talking about?”

“How do you know Miss. Higgins?”

Jason gives him a suspicious narrowed look. “She used to work a corner of my beat. Didn’t know her name was Chelsea, though. Everyone always called her Cherry. She’s good at keeping a lookout for information as long as I give her some sort of pastry in return. Her sweet tooth never fails.”

Tim tries to envision Jason giving out cookies to prostitutes on dirty street corners. He barks out an incredulous laugh.

“What now?” Jason says, almost looking offended. Which only makes Tim laugh harder because, really. Who knew the Red Hood could be so _expressive?_

“You,” is all Tim says, shaking his head as they walk back towards room 1312. Tim makes sure to lead them on an indirect, roundabout way to the stairwell. “You just don’t make any sense.”

Jason doesn’t respond, but he also doesn’t drop his wary gaze the entire trip back to the room.

When Jason leaves again, all of his armour and weaponry strapped back on along with a pissed off face that completes the look, Tim has a hard time moving from his spot. He knows that he’s wasted all of his break time by now, but it’s difficult to care when he feels like everything he’s ever known has just been turned inside out.

He needs more coffee.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied earlier. This is going to be three chapters long, because I can't write short and simple shit. I'm silently raging at myself. This is going to be almost 30,000 words. That's almost as long as the multi-chapter I should be working on right now. This was supposed to be a very brief detour. Supposed to be.
> 
> I knew school would take up all my time, but I didn't fully realise by just how much. Add on top of that the job I'm working hard to get, and One Step Closer feels like it's going to take years to finish. Also, this fic feels like it's never going to fucking end. Never. It's never ending. Why won't it end and leave me alone?
> 
> The next chapter will come out...at some point.

Chelsea is there for a week. Tim had kept her in the hospital as long as humanly possible but even the powers of a doctor are limited and he’s letting her go sooner than he wants to. 

True to Jason’s word, he had shown up hours after presumably beating a few faces in, and better yet Tim had never gotten any patients afterwards named Max or Jeremy. Jason didn’t stop with one visit, either. Every morning after the normal hours for patrol, Tim had passed by Chelsea’s room to hear voices when he knows no visitors have checked in at the desk, or he’s parted the curtains of the window into the room to see a glimpse of Jason in various positions around the room.

The most notable is two days after giving Chelsea cheesecake, when Tim had peeked through the curtains to find Jason in the middle of animatedly telling a story. He was between the foot of the bed and the TV and he was staring at the ceiling, gesticulating wildly and pacing and occasionally jumping in order to thrust his arm out in Chelsea’s direction with his pointer finger displayed to make some sort of revelation or point. An excited, lively smile was curled over his lips as he recounted the event. Tim couldn’t hear what he was saying and wished for nothing more than to be able to. Tim had left and decided to peek in a few hours later, only to find Jason fast asleep in the armchair.

It was the only time Tim had opened the door on him. He had been planning to walk over and wake the man up, not willing to allow a poor nurse to get a heart attack when it was time for Chelsea’s medication later in the day, but had been forced to pause.

Jason looked peaceful, sleeping like that, in a way Tim never thought he could be. Sure, gone were the days when Jason was hellbent on his revenge plan against Batman, hellbent on bringing those who had wronged him to their knees and further, right into the ground. But even though he always wears the helmet, the way he projects his voice paints a picture of self depreciation and bitterness, sarcasm and cynicism, pessimism and spite that Tim can’t pair with the face he saw that morning, lips half parted and face soft, chest rising and falling gently under a thin, nondescript t-shirt.

So he had left without waking Jason up, and double checked to make sure the window was open every night afterwards.

Now, with Chelsea gone, Tim knows Jason won’t be there when he passes by during his night shifts. He checks by habit the first night anyway, which embarrasses him enough that he never does it again.

He does continue to call him, however. The third call after the molestation case, Jason comes through the window and grabs his wrist. Tim instantly goes to twist out of his grip and maybe beat him in the head with a chair leg when he realises that Jason’s grip isn’t tight and there’s a pen in his hand.

He writes a phone number on Tim’s palm. At Tim’s incredulous look, Jason rolls his eyes, which Tim can see because he had begun to take off his helmet for their meetings. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, it’s a burner. But I’m sick of getting reminded that Oracle always knows what I’m doing when you ask her to text me, so here. Try contacting me like a normal human being sometime.”

“You didn’t make it easy,” Tim grumbles in response, staring at the phone number. “You’re not going to destroy it right after this, right?”

“Nah, unless you piss me off. This one is for you.” Tim’s face must be doing something weird, because Jason’s eyebrows arch. “Try not to feel too special. I have like, fifty.”

Tim is determined to  _ not  _ contact Jason outside of business. His entire text history consists of two word texts on his part and no responses from Jason. Still, the Hood shows up without fail until their sixth meetup, or what is supposed to be their sixth meetup, when Jason replies to Tim’s text with:  _ Can’t. _

Tim is answering before he can stop himself.  _ Why not? _

He shouldn’t have bothered. Jason doesn’t reply. The next time Tim texts, though, planning on delivering the same case but having waited a few days, Jason does show up. He doesn’t mention what had happened and Tim doesn’t ask. They’re not friends.

The most important part out of their odd arrangement, however, is that Tim feels like he’s finally doing something significant for the first time in a long time. Apart from when he occasionally saves someone from the brink of death, there’s a severe absence in his new life, a gaping hole where something else used to be and he can’t pinpoint what. He loves his job, he truly does. He’s good at it. If he were still a vigilante, he would have had to keep up his position as the CEO of Drake Industries to fund it and there’s nothing he’s ever hated more than standing in front of the board’s unappeasing eyes and listing off wages, workers, plans, people like they’re just numbers, like the world is nothing but a line graph that everyone is ready to manipulate in order to show the expected results. He had to sacrifice something and he decided that he’d rather love what he does all of the time instead of only half of it.

But maybe Tim’s not as done with that life as he led himself to believe.

Also, just because he’s left the life of business behind doesn’t mean he’s no longer rich or famous or the adopted son of Bruce Wayne, and that means galas. He tries to avoid them as much as possible -- no longer being a vigilante means no longer needing to keep up appearances -- but Dick persuades him into this one. Apparently, he misses seeing him at the manor. Personally, Tim thinks Dick could have just dropped by the hospital in his tights if he missed Tim so much. Jason does it all the time.

(And that’s probably the point, because Tim should have known better than to suspect that being pestered into attending a gala is meant to be anything less than an interrogation).

It’s weird walking up to the manor as nothing more than a guest, but the surrealness is caused more by a nostalgic blast to the past than anything else. It feels like the days where he was nothing but a guest to these galas happened a million years ago. He’s supposedly living in the prime time of his youth, yet he’s never felt so old. The knowledge that at this moment, Tim is the oldest he’s ever been and the youngest he’ll ever be rings a little too close.

The moment he steps onto the highest porch step, Alfred is opening the front door. The man’s normally proper, blank face melts into something like fondness, shown only by the twitch of his lip and the softening of his brows. Tim gives him a small smile in return. He isn’t feeling much in the mood for smiles and small talk, but he knows Alfred would recognise a too-wide smile from a mile away and at least what he does offer is genuine. The butler seems to appreciate it, but he still stands a formal distance away and sweeps his hand out to gesture to the ballroom. “I assume you know the way, sir,” he says.

“Sir, wow,” Tim comments before he can help it. “Definitely a step up from young sir, huh?”

“Certainly a necessary change when a man has added ‘Dr.’ to the front of his name,” responds Alfred, the fondness more visible now. Alfred’s obvious pride boosts Tim’s mood away from the slowly drifting melancholy.

Tim hadn’t made a conscious effort to avoid Wayne Manor. After receiving his master’s degree, school had made kicking his ass its number one priority and he had moved away from the manor because all the activity, along with everyone who stopped by, was dedicated to vigilantism. When his studies had begun, he had still managed to squeeze in a bit of work to help the rest of family whenever he thought they needed an extra hand, normally working from Oracle’s angle. Physical appearances into the night became once a week occasions, then once a month, and then not at all when he had decided to start taking night classes to speed his degree along. 

It had become difficult to focus entirely on his education when there was the ever present looming temptation to run out and kick some heads in. He moved out to avoid the temptation and the sudden decrease, almost halt really, of information reaching him about Gotham’s nightlife did the trick. He had never meant to ignore it completely, but if he didn’t ignore it, Tim is sure that he would have broken his vow to focus his efforts on healing instead of hurting long ago.

After all, he had entered the nightlife convinced it was temporary. It just latched on and didn’t want to let go until Tim had to resort to prying it off.

When he enters the ballroom, the live music and mingling is already in full swing. The room is just crowded enough that almost everyone is engaged in enough conversation to distract them from his appearance. Almost everyone because, as always, there are three notable exceptions.

Bruce Wayne is flexing his Brucie persona in a circle of people, and he doesn’t even glance at Tim when he enters. He’s too caught up in some story or another, wildly waving a hand delicately clutching a flute of champagne. Tim has no doubt it’s about to spill on someone. Dick Grayson has no such preoccupations, however. He must have been waiting for Tim, and beelines straight towards him with arms grandly held open to foreshadow an engulfing embrace (more to show others that he has a specific intention in mind, Tim bets, in case anyone is entertaining the idea of approaching him). “Timbo!” he exclaims. His eyes are squinted into half moons in that way they do when he’s genuinely happy. Acting as his shadow trailing behind him, Damian Wayne’s expression is the polar opposite. “You actually showed!”

Even if Tim has already deduced that there’s an ulterior motive to being directly demanded to attend rather than just having a suggestion dropped via Facebook invite, he still can’t help but feel a rush of relief at the sight of Dick’s beaming face. His presence seems to drag languidity right out of people’s bones. The best breed of performer. “Sorry, but the only events I’m good for now are charities. I’m kind of determined to never talk business with anyone ever again.” What the hell is this gala for, anyway? 

Tim can’t remember a suit ever feeling this stuffy. It’s ridiculous that he’s actually starting to wish he were wearing his scrubs.

He indulges Dick when the man pulls him into a tight hug and remains close, one hand on his shoulder as he begins to steer him away from the main entryway. Tim still feels a twinge awkward at the constant physical contact, but he’s learned to kick the habit of shying away when the contact is initiated by Dick. The older man tried to respect his personal boundaries as best he could when Tim first showed up and Tim still appreciates the efforts, but the fact of the matter is, Dick never realises what he’s doing. His grasps for physical connection are entirely subconscious, especially around people he sincerely enjoys being with. Tim has learned to view Dick’s instinctive urge to touch him as a compliment. “Seriously, Tim. I missed you. How have  _ you  _ had less time than  _ me  _ to come around?” he asks.

Tim goes for a modest shrug. “Days kind of run together at this point. I suddenly understand how you felt when you worked for the BPD.”

“Honestly, it felt kind of great. I was thinking about applying for the GCPD, get under Gordon’s wing and do some real good. I can’t decide if he likes me or not. It’s ironic that I dated his daughter yet I’ve run into him more during the night than the day.”

Tim likes the thought of having another member of the family working in the same circle of work as him. “If you go through with it, we’ll probably run into each more than we do now.”

“Wow, you might be right. That’s seriously sad.”

Damian is starting to look more pissed off the longer Dick stands there, but Tim is fairly used to that by now. That kid has never liked him and clearly never will. His temper had only flared when Tim had announced his decision to go to medical school. Neither of them had ever seen Bruce’s face show intense approval or pride for anyone but Dick, yet apparently Tim had beaten that record and Damian’s jealousy is certainly no better for it. The boy never really grew out of it, despite nearly being an adult.

Actually, the only person in the family to not have immediately rejected Tim upon first impression is Dick. Maybe that’s why they get along.

“Oh, you just  _ have  _ to meet Tim!”

It’s funny that Tim has impressed Bruce more going for the complete opposite career choice than he ever did following in his footsteps. Dick grasps his shoulder tighter and leans into his ear as Bruce approaches, waving over an older couple that, despite the woman’s glittering red dress, honestly just blends into the rest of the crowd. “He’s going to want to talk to you, by the way. Start rehearsing your alibi.”

It’s clear to the entire family except for Bruce that Tim is the only person who is able to lie straight to his face and get away with it, but Tim is less concerned with the fact that Dick is blatantly telling him to lie to Bruce than he with the fact that Dick feels like he has a reason to lie. He’s suddenly dreading this inevitable ‘talk’ which, dammit, no. He’s not a sixteen year old people-pleaser anymore (well, he’s not sixteen years old, anyway).

Bruce finally meets the little circle of his...well, Tim doesn’t really know what to collectively call them. Tim could be called his son (if Bruce called him his son) with Damian, but Dick was never adopted. Dick has only ever been his ward, yet out of all of them, there’s a solemn part of Tim that says Dick is the only one Bruce has ever really considered his son.

Things shouldn’t be this complicated, and Tim doesn’t know if they are simply because they’re a family of vigilantes or because they’re a family including Bruce.

As always, his Brucie face is plastered with a blinding grin, but for once, Tim sees something in his eyes, too. He launches into a monologue about Tim’s entire schooling and career, playing the role of the proud, shallow father. Tim isn’t listening too much. Somehow, his eyes have found Damian.

When Damian had first arrived at the manor, aside from his dramatic and vaguely traumatising reaction to Tim, Damian had stuck to Bruce like glue in that distanced way only blood descendents of the Wayne family could do. If Bruce could be found then so could Damian, albeit a few feet away and maybe pretending that he was doing something else. But if Damian used to be Bruce’s little moon, then he’s joined a different orbit, because the sudden inclusion of more people has Damian sliding behind Dick in a clever ‘oh look, this person coincidentally ended up between us, separating us, I had absolutely no say in this’ way, and somehow, the people Dick seems to be acting as a mediator between is Damian and… Bruce.

Tim can’t decide whether or not Dick notices it. Though the man is not as oblivious as he appears, he is when it comes down to his pseudo-father. He genuinely can’t seem to comprehend why the others have such diverse and occasionally adverse reactions to him, despite spending the most time with him, and Tim has no doubt it’s because of the way Bruce treats Dick personally. Tim isn’t entirely certain of their relationship, knows that Dick acknowledges Bruce’s difficulties (or else he would never have completely left the city) and that they don’t always get along, that Dick can become so fed up with the man that he’s willing to take missions on the other side of the galaxy to be away for a while, but maybe it all circles back to the fact that Dick knows him better than anyone else. None of the rest of the family have that kind of connection, no matter how strained and unhealthy it can sometimes appear to be.

But Dick Grayson is Dick Grayson, and Bruce Wayne was an entirely different man when Dick was Robin, being raised under his wing. He hadn’t had the grinding years as a vigilante of Gotham to wear him down to something cold.

Tim isn’t sure Dick understands that Damian had always treated Dick as Dick used to treat Bruce -- the shield to keep him safe, a father to replace the one that was taken away.

“Don’t you agree that he’s grown into such a fine young man? Making a real difference in this world. Truly helping people. It’s wonderful!” Bruce exclaims, swishing his flute towards Tim in acknowledgement.

“I imagine it’ll be so nice to have a doctor in the family once that age starts catching up to you, Bruce! If only my children stuck around that long!”

Tim wishes he could tell Damian what he really thinks of the situation, which must certainly be no where near how the emotionally stunted boy is perceiving it, because Tim believes that Bruce is more proud of Tim’s job than of Tim. Tim had spent a good chunk of years fighting to fill Bruce’s shoes, and he loves how he isn’t doing that now. Yet, he can’t help but wonder if Bruce is viewing him as a way to fill Thomas Wayne’s.

* * *

Tim kind of wants Bruce to put on the cowl. Usually, the man makes it a point to have blatantly vigilante-related subjects discussed while in uniform, either as a psychological thing or a precaution for any unwanted witnesses, but this is either important enough or vague enough that he doesn’t bother. It’s strange. These days, Tim only sees Bruce’s face when he’s Brucie. Right now, his identities are meshing and it doesn’t settle well with Tim’s head or anxiety.

“You’ve been speaking with Jason,” Bruce finally gets out. His voice isn’t Batman. He’s just Bruce. They’re sitting in the library, such a weirdly comfortable setting for a very uncomfortable conversation. Tim has no doubt that either Dick or Damian, probably both, are finding some way of listening in. Tim would prefer to have this conversation in the Batcave. There, the hard edges and cold air forces everyone to be professional. The Batcave is where serious, professional conversations happen -- not here.

Did Tim revoke his ability to go and leave as he pleases from the Batcave when he hung up his cowl? He isn’t sure if that matters or not. At the time, Tim had thought hanging up the cowl was just refusing to jump off rooftops every night, but little things have changed while he wasn’t looking and he isn’t sure what to do about it. Tim doesn’t reply because statements don’t need answers.

“Why?” Bruce finally asks.

That’s a good question. Tim wants to know the answer to it, too. “No one else will.”

Bruce would have looked taken aback if he had any less training, but Tim can see it in the way he blinks a little too quickly, the slight pause of his fingers. “He’s a criminal,” he says as justification. “He chose not to associate with us himself.”

“And we let him. We just let him go to do whatever he wants. Yeah, he’s a criminal in the traditional sense of the word. But his heart’s in the right place.” Tim genuinely has no idea where this is coming from. The words must have been buried in the back of the throat, pressing to get out like an itch, but he had never noticed. Or maybe he had but he had chosen to ignore it in favour of evaluating and analysing the situation first to deem if the words were necessary or relevant, or if they should have been left for a better time. He’s starting to learn that over-analysation leads to inactivity. There’s never a right time for the truth in the way he wants it to be -- harmless, productive. There’s no such thing as a better time.

“His heart--” Bruce pauses, rethinks his words, restructures his sentence. “His heart is in murder. He thinks what he’s doing is right. Associating with him is encouragement, and he’ll think you approve.” Bruce doesn’t ask if Tim approves. He doesn’t ask if Tim’s working with him. He doesn’t ask about any of Tim’s motives. But Tim doesn’t know if it’s trust, or whether or not he simply doesn’t want to know the answer.

“I told him I don’t,” Tim answers anyway. “He respects that I’m a doctor and that my job is to save people. But I won’t stop talking to him”--talking, not  _ associating,  _ a cold word belonging in hard files meant to distance from the complexities of relationships--”whether you approve of it or not. I’m my own person, Bruce. I make my own decisions. You’re not my mentor or leader anymore, you don’t command my actions. My choice in this is that Jason needs  _ someone  _ to ground him, and I’m the best candidate. No, more than that, I  _ want  _ to.” He does? Apparently, he does. “I never knew him before the Pit, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who remembers where he came from, and maybe those are the roots that drove him over the edge, but they’re also the same ones that put him back together. He’s a person underneath that helmet, and maybe if you actually took the time to look for that person, you’d see him for yourself.”

Bruce is silent in his armchair, bowed over his knees and clasped hands. This interrogation, conversation, whatever it’s supposed to be wasn’t meant to go this way. Tim, the formerly obedient little soldier, is a soldier no longer. He’s a doctor and damn anyone who tries to make him out to be something different. 

A doctor fixes everything that isn’t on the surface -- they focus on what’s inside first, willing to cut open a person’s shell to get to what’s underneath because they understand, he understands, that the most lethal of wounds will always be the internal ones. That’s the problem with the Pit. It brought a body back to life by stitching the wounds on the outside, but that body still has a wound beneath the surface and it’s bleeding. He’s bleeding out and eventually, he’s going to run out of blood.

“I’m not speaking to you as your commander,” Bruce says, looking up at him with his back still hunched over. Which is why they’re in the library, not the cave. It’s why they’re both in armchairs, equal height, not standing. “I’m warning you, not telling you, that Jason is dangerous. He’s unpredictable and he’s not in the right place, it’s very unlikely that he ever will be. He’s built himself a criminal empire because he took all the bricks by force. He’s not someone a doctor should ever want or need to spend time with. You’ve made a life for yourself, Tim. I’m warning you not to throw it away.”

And suddenly, Tim realises with sudden clarity a new fact about Bruce Wayne.

Unlike Dick, he doesn’t do anything that he does because he wants to. But unlike Tim, he can’t see a better way. He feels an obligation to go out every night and save lives with his fists because of something done to him by those he fights that he’ll never be able to shake.

In Tim’s opinion, Bruce is so much more like Jason than either of them will ever admit.

* * *

Tim considers himself very good at reading people, but even he doesn’t know how Bruce would have reacted if he had known exactly what he and Jason were getting up to. On one hand, he might approve of the fact that Jason isn’t killing during these specific missions. On the other hand, Tim is not being as strictly ‘normal’ as he had declared he would be.

Things are good, though. As good as they can be at least, considering the types of cases Tim is handing over. Their meetings aren’t regular for the first month or so, or at least they haven’t been happening long enough to develop a pattern, but by the third month Jason is dropping by at least once every three weeks without the need for a message.

This time, the only case Tim has for him is a few tips he overheard concerning the Irish mob on the west side. Even if Tim hadn’t vowed to only give Jason the cases no one would pay attention to, the ones that would remain unsolved which aren’t linked to some larger organization, the west side isn’t Jason’s place. Cass will handle it just fine on her own. So when Jason appears in the window of the dark room, Tim isn’t holding any papers.

“Have you ever felt that this place is creepy? Because it’s fucking creepy,” is Jason’s greeting. “Dark hospital rooms, complete silence, sharp medical equipment that can be easily used for torture and enough PT equipment to tie down the Batman totally screams American Horror Story.”

“I’ll let the triads know that your weakness is Thera-Bands,” Tim remarks.

“Just the triads? You’re aiming low, Baby Bird.”

That’s the strange thing. Tim thought it would be the other way around, but the longer Jason and Tim have spoken -- their awkward, fumbling conversations becoming quick, witty quips that still deliberately ignore any subjects having to do with their pasts -- the more Jason has deviated between nicknames. Yet, he started with doc, what Tim currently is, and has worked his way backwards. Tim hasn’t been called Baby Bird since he was seventeen.

Tim arches an eyebrow and can’t help but say, “If I’m Baby Bird, you get to be Big Red.”

“That makes me sound fat,” Jason accuses, taking off his helmet. There’s a rush of contentment to see Jason’s face, which is also weird. Tim should not be feeling things such as contentment when faced with a serial killer. “Besides, Dick only called me Big because you were Little. If I’m Big Red, you’re Little Red and I swear I’ll steal Superman’s cape just to make you wear it for a whole day to cement that fact.”

Tim’s lips twitch at the idea. He doesn’t think wearing a red cape over his scrubs is allowed, but it’d be amusing to wear the cape of Earth’s most iconic hero and have no one know. It’d also be nice to hear from Kon how Kal would react. “If you managed to steal Superman’s cape just for me, I’d be honoured.”

Jason’s comments aren’t always sarcastic or biting. Sometimes, they’re pleasant. Teasing without the bitterness. It happens most when his helmet is off, as if without it, he can forget who he’s trying to make himself out to be. It’s a thrilling change, watching the man before him shift personas without realising it, letting a little of who Tim idolised during his childhood to shine through in place of the vigilante who tried to murder him.

“You’d owe me.”

“And what would I owe you?”

Normally when they banter, Tim has something else he’s doing at the same time, even if half of the time he’s just pretending his attention is split. He doesn’t know why he does it. But when Jason is looking at him, he finds it hard to make himself look back, as if prolonged eye contact between them will shatter their fragilely constructed bubble of clever comebacks and unsteady peace. This time, he has nothing in his hands to flip through, no equipment to fiddle with. Just his hands stuffed in his pockets a few feet away from the window and facing Jason head on.

Jason has his helmet in his hands and he’s standing a lot closer than Tim realised, as if he had just teleported in the span of a blink. The helmet is hooked under his left arm, nestled against his side, and he has this half-smirk on his face that promises trouble, but his eyes are bright, brighter than they were at the beginning of this strange truce between them. He has to look down at Tim even with the small bit of distance they have between them, so his presence unintentionally feels overwhelming, and like he’s a lot closer than he must be. Tim is too busy staring up at Jason’s face instead of the space between their chests.

God, why wasn’t puberty as nice to Tim as it was to everyone else? Even Damian is taller than him now.

“I’ll think of something. Unless you had something in mind?”

Tim can’t tell if he has nothing in his mind or absolutely everything all at once. He feel like he can’t breathe. A beat passes before he steps back to allow space to gather himself, though from what, he’s not sure. When he looks up, Jason is glancing down at Tim’s empty hands. “No case?” he asks.

“Not this time,” Tim answers lamely. He’s suddenly struck with the realisation that he should have just texted Jason this fact so the other man could have avoided the whole trip here. It had occurred to him a few hours ago, briefly, but maybe he had been too tired to bother. “Sorry.”

Jason’s eyebrow raises at the apology. “You cancelled our appointment last minute. That’s got a fee,” he says instead, leaning away from Tim in order to rest his back against the wall. He’s twirling his helmet in a way that reminds Tim of a basketball. Before Tim can ask what he wants, just to humour him, he continues: “Considering how much work it is to swing all the way here, that means food.”

Tim wants to point out that it’s sort of almost 1AM, but he got used to odd hours long before becoming a doctor. “My shift isn’t over,” he says instead.

“It ends in an hour,” Jason refutes, and Tim doesn’t want to know how he knows that;.

“I’m on call right after, and for the rest of the week.”

“Great, me too.”

That smirk is back full force and Tim decides he likes it so much, he doesn’t even mind paying for their meal.

* * *

Tim isn’t entire sure how life led him to a point where he finds himself eating a Meat Extravaganza from the local Italian pizzeria on the rooftop of his workplace, but he has to admit that life has a damn good taste in cuisine. “Oh my god,” he says as he bites into the crust. The pizza itself is just okay, but the crust… "This is so much better than the shit they try to pass for food at the hospital."

“Say goodbye to Domino’s forever,” Jason says smugly, sitting cross legged beside where Tim’s back is against the rooftop ledge. 

Tim misses this. He almost forgot how cold it can get up here, but how refreshing that is, how much clearer the taste of rain is when not drowned out by the overwhelming aromas wafting from the storefronts on the ground. “What about Frankie's?” Tim can’t help but add.

Jason arches an eyebrow with half a pizza stuffed in his mouth and it’s ridiculous to imagine that this is the same man who can empty an entire clip into a person without blinking. Tim tries his best not to think about it. “I didn’t just hear that you order from Frankie’s.”

“I can’t believe you used to order from Domino’s.”

They stare at each other for a split second, fighting down matching grins before Jason says, “Now you’re going to say Sahara is off limits, too.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can be seen with you anymore.”

Jason snorts. “You’re the guy who folds his pizza! I wouldn’t be surprised if you cut your hamburgers with knives, too.” Tim doesn’t say anything. Jason gapes. “No,” he gasps theatrically.

“Drama queen,” Tim mumbles. "Restaurants make them too big."

It’s the nicest evening Tim has had in awhile, which should probably make him a feel at least a little weird, but it’s hard to think about morals and ethics when he’s enjoying local homemade pizza in a cozy winter jacket and the entire twinkling city of Gotham stretched out around him. It’s not the best vantage point, but he prefers it this way. He likes that they’re right in the middle, where the only thing closing them in are towers of gleaming metal and glass and no one else to bear witness. Prying eyes are far below. It makes it so that this moment feels removed from the rest of the world, where if Tim’s life were to be written in a series of events, it wouldn’t be included because there would be no place to insert it. He knows that means when the morning light comes, it’ll be something never spoken of again. But it also means that nothing else occupying the rest of the world will be spoken of right now, in this bubble they’ve created for themselves, and because of that everything else is a worthy sacrifice.

Jason doesn’t answer, just offers him a smile that’s all puffed cheeks and no teeth, and Tim feels himself enraptured by the sight again and again.

The bat symbol flickers on against the bottoms of rolling grey clouds. The jerk back into reality that the rush of adrenaline seeing it brings isn’t welcome, but Jason’s smile doesn’t fade. He wonders why. Tim doesn’t know anything about Bruce and Jason’s relationship after Jason had tried and failed to kill Tim, but he figures that a grudge intense enough to warrant a manipulative psychologically traumatising murder plot isn’t easily dismissed. Tim thinks that maybe Jason just hasn’t seen it until he says, “Looks like the GCPD are out of their depth again.”

Tim watches, wondering what he’s going to do. The smile fades, slowly but surely. “Do you ever see that and want to go back to the life?” Jason asks when he finishes his slice. “Go back to running around with the Batman?”

Tim doesn’t have to think about it. “No,” he answers honestly.

“Why not?” Jason asks. He seems surprised.

Why doesn’t he? He considers the question for a moment, allowing the silence to wrap them like a blanket and for Jason to untangle his legs and press his back against the ledge beside Tim. “It’s the quitting that’s hard,” he finally manages. “Like an addiction. It’s the first step that’s hard to get through, that makes you want to go running back. Being  _ that  _ was the only thing that made me ever feel like I was worth something. It hooked all the parts of me that were craving for a purpose and fed them a temporary high so that I had to keep going back for more. But once I wasn’t feeding that addiction, once I started putting those parts of me into something else, giving them a different purpose… I can’t imagine going back.” 

Jason remains silent and Tim can hear more than see the steady in and out of his breath curling through the air. He gets an overwhelming urge to touch him, but even with half a foot between them, he feels too far away. “When I see the symbol, I can see hope again instead of empty coffee cups and future scars. I’m finally okay with letting someone else more capable than me take care of it. I used to try and put all that responsibility on myself. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to take care of people one person at a time, get to focus all my energy on keeping one heart beating instead of looking at multiple like a number on a game and I’m just trying to get the highest score. It reminds me of the value of what it is that we do. The satisfaction of making sure one person makes it home to their family instead of being frustrated when we don’t totally prevent an alien invasion. When the glass was half full instead of half empty.” They can’t save every life and sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes, that’s just the way things are meant to be and it’s not their fault, Tim implies but doesn’t say.

Tim misses the wind whipping through his hair, the refreshing feeling of peeling his mask off his face after a night of ass-whooping. But it’s only been replaced with the feeling of his back cracking in ten places when he finally hits his bed covers after a 20-hour shift, how soft pyjamas are after a full day of wearing scrubs. He never truly gave any of it up.

“Remembering the little things,” Jason agrees.

People always want more, but when they accomplish more, it’s never enough. No one will ever feel like they have enough until they learn to appreciate what they’ve already done instead of what they have yet to do. Tim could say all of that and more. “Remembering the little things,” he echoes instead, and dares to place his bare hand gently on Jason’s left forearm. 

The jacket is rough and cold to the touch, creases in the leather from constant use. He wants to feel the warmth of Jason’s bare arm instead of the jacket, but feeling the disappointment of the barrier would be to go against what he has just been saying. Tim remembers to feel satisfaction in the little things, and decides that this is perfect.

 

* * *

 

Things go much smoother for a while after that. Texts are no longer curt and cold. Jason responds more often than not and usually in some sort of amusingly snarky way, and Tim finds that he can imagine Jason in his messages because he’s really no different through text.

It all goes to hell a month later with Renee Rodriguez.

A woman married to an abusive husband who won’t allow for a divorce. When she lands in the hospital with a severe concussion and fractured coccyx, two things that he can’t figure out how they might be related, Tim takes her fully under his care because he’s the only one who seems skeptical of the husband, and the only medical personnel who gets looked at with gratitude by his patient when he doesn’t let her husband into the room. Tim discovers that he’s supremely good at pulling medical bullshit out of his ass to keep the man from protesting why he isn’t allowed to see his spouse during visiting hours.

He gets a few answers out of her the next day. It doesn’t take as much work as he had expected. Apparently, Renee has been trying for a divorce for months. “He wouldn’t even sign them in jail,” she mutters angrily. Tim wonders when he had become his patients’ therapist as well as of their doctor. He doesn’t ask specific, targeted questions until a day after that.

It’s because she has finger shaped bruises on her hips.

“He doesn’t…” she starts, stops, begins again, “he’s a bit rough. Y’know,” and waves her wrist. “I’m not a fan of rough.” But she’s trying to dilute the truth. She’s not a fan of it at all.

It’s technically not rape if they’re married.

Tim gives the case to Jason, Jason more than happily beats Mr. Rodriguez around a bit, and though Tim has to reel him in just in case with a phone call because he’s starting to learn how to read Jason’s tells, that’s that. Or at least, it should be. Until Tim is halfway through one of his shifts and returning from the secretary’s desk only to see Renee Rodriguez being wheeled past him. Her file says laryngeal fracture and nothing about how. Tim isn’t overseeing her this time around. He makes the mistake of texting Jason, but he does it too soon.

She dies. Tim cancels the meet up with Jason, knows the police can handle it, knows Jason  _ can’t.  _ Not correctly. But Jason is part of a suspicious breed. He finds out anyway.

_ >>You were going to lie to me. _

Tim stares down at the accusatory message on his phone. It stares right back. He feels his heart drop somewhere into his gut. If Jason said that Tim had already lied to him, Tim would be able to counter the argument that he hadn’t, even if he knows that a lie by omission is just as bad. But it’s how Jason knows Tim was going to sweep it all under the rug that catches in his throat because it’s true. He was going to do exactly that. But can Jason blame him? They both know why.

_ <<You would have killed him. You’ve already done everything you could.  _

_ >>Not everything. _

Even if Tim knows it’s coming, he feels cold dread slide over his arms. He excuses himself from his patient’s room -- it’s just a check up, something the nurses are supposed to do anyway -- and fights to keep himself from sprinting down the hall. He doesn’t want to wait until he gets to somewhere completely abandoned. He stops in an adjacent corridor corner with a small cushioned chair and is calling Jason before he sits down.

_ I’m sorry, but the person you are trying to reach has a voice mailbox that has not been setup yet. _

Tim stares numbly at the screen. Hangs up, tries again.

_ Riiing. Riiing. Riiing. I’m sorry, but the person you are trying to reach has a voice mailbox that has not been setup yet. _

_ Riiing. Riiing. Riiing. I’m sorry, but the person you are trying to reach-- _

_ Riiing. Riiing. Riiing. I’m sorry, but the-- _

_ Riiing. Riiing. Riiing. I’m sorry-- _

_ Riiing. Riiing. Riiing.-- _

_ Riiing. Riiing. Riiing.-- _

_ Riiing. Riiing. Riiing.-- _

He never answers.

 

* * *

 

Their roles are soon reversed. Tim calls and never gets an answer. Jason texts and never gets an answer either. Tim is perfectly content to pretend his phone isn’t blowing up until an intern in the staff room manages to track him down with the blinking device in his hand, looking down at the screen with a positively freaked out expression on his face. “Uh, Dr. Drake? I was told this is yours, and it looks like someone--”

“I know,” Tim says, almost turns away and leaves the phone in the intern’s hands but doesn’t really want all of his possibly incriminating messages to be read. He takes it, thanks the intern even though there’s nothing to thank him for. He looks down as the screen blinks on with another message.

_ >>I don’t regret it. _

_ >>So, is this it? _

_ >>You knew who I am. Why the fuck did you talk to me to begin with if you can’t handle that? _

_ >>I haven’t suddenly become a fucking monster. I was one all along. _

_ >>You’re a fucking asshole. _

_ >>You’re no better than the rest of the fucking assholes. Call me friend, family, partner, whatever the fuck as long as you can blissfully ignore everything that doesn’t fit into your tiny box of moral perfection. I told you that I’m not your goddamn pet project. _

Tim knows he wants someone to yell at. He’s pissed, but tough luck, because Tim is pretty pissed off too. He can’t help the petty satisfaction he gets at seeing Jason’s mounting frustration, but it’s accompanied by a growing feeling of helplessness as well. It’s only been a day. Once Jason gets his rage out via one-sided text message, Tim knows that he won’t ever text him again. Maybe he’ll even leave Gotham for another year. That’s Jason’s routine. Spew his rage at anyone in his path and then leave before they can respond so that he can keep the last word.

If Jason wanted to talk so badly, he should have answered one of his 18 missed calls. Tim blocks the number because seeing the messages makes him want to puke all over again.

“Tim?” It’s Shawna, poking her head out of a room a few feet in front of him. “Are you okay?”

He’s not, but he knows that he should say he is anyway. Tim isn’t unused to faking his emotions concerning anything to do with the other half of his life. But it’s not half of his life anymore. He hasn’t dealt with vigilante-related activities in years, not except for holding his tongue when he knows more than his co-workers who talk about the masks of Gotham when relevant to the news headliners. 

It must be like knowing a language. Someone can grow up only speaking their first language, but after they switch full-time to another, they find that they can hardly speak the tongue that used to roll words off of like water. So Tim suddenly finds that he can no longer whip a smile on his face like he used to, can’t slide a lie he’s hardly thinking about into the conversation and instead sits heavily on one of the benches in the hall, his head swarming in a million directions at once, his chest squeezing with something like grief. “I don’t think so,” he says instead.

Shawna hovers outside of the door for a moment, watching him, before coming over to sit beside him. The gentle pressure of her arm is nice. It’s not a suffocating hug of the kind Dick craves, but simply a presence. That’s the best form of comfort for Tim. She doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to go on. Surprisingly enough, he does.

“I killed someone.” He knows how it sounds, but he can’t take it back. He opens his mouth to correct himself, let her know that no, he did not pull a trigger on anyone, but that’s not true. It’s not true.

“Honey, no you didn’t,” Shawna says instantly.

She doesn’t  _ understand.  _ “Shawna, they’re--”

“Dead,” she interrupts. “They’re dead. I know.” Tim snaps his head up to stare at her. She continues in order to relieve his obvious bafflement, and maybe slight panic. “Renee Rodriguez. You were on the team working on her, right? It’s not your fault. We can’t save everyone.”

God, Renee. She’s dead. That nervous wreck of a somehow-smiling woman from a few days ago is dead. And so is her husband. Tim says nothing in response, just stares at his hands because that’s not who he killed. He didn’t kill Renee. He killed her husband, and Shawna will never, ever know. He can’t tell  _ anyone.  _ Not a nurse. Not a vigilante.

“I hope they catch the bastard who did it. Give him a life sentence. Did you read the report? That poor woman… Alleged sexual abuse, the neighbours said. And she’s got the scars to match. The bruises… So many, and all of them different ages. I’m betting it’s the husband. He hasn’t been heard from yet.”

There’s a scream clawing it’s way up Tim’s throat. He swallows in hopes that maybe he can push it back down.

“First death, huh?” says Shawna. She curls a palm over his shoulder, rubbing circles.

If only she knew, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

 

* * *

 

As if Tim’s life hasn’t already gone to hell, things really pick up during an ironically slow hour, when there’s a small crowd of people in the lounge and chatter has filled the air in a constant enough stream that Tim can use it as background noise to zone out, not separated enough to be a cause for concern but not engaged enough to be actively conversing. He’s sitting in one of the curvy blue chairs with three other people around the small round table, staring at the bumpy pattern of the fake white wood. Someone hits the table with their hip hard enough that it makes a brief sound as it’s scooted across the linoleum floor.

The door opens, and the chatter of the room quiets a few beats later. “You can’t be in here,” Nick, a heart surgeon, says. He’s had the longest shift of all of them today and there’s that look on his face that everyone knows means to either steer clear away or to give him coffee and run. His voice now comes out blunt and unfriendly.

Whoever is at the door blatantly ignores them, and Tim finds out who it is seconds later without having to look up. “Tim!” exclaims Jason. He sounds irate.

Tim’s head snaps up and now everyone is looking at him. He doesn’t appreciate the attention. “What are you doing here?” he demands without taking the time to think about his response. Fuck careful words, Jason isn’t supposed to be at his work. This is supposed to be Tim’s one safe haven, and the staff room is supposed to be a stranded island surrounded by an ocean of inane vigilante nonsense that he doesn’t have the willpower to keep up with. In a few steps, Jason has managed to thoroughly sink his island and Tim feels like he’s drowning. It’s too much. He needs  _ peace.  _ He needs to be alone.

Jason looks like he didn’t think this through. “We need to talk,” he grits out, but he still looks angry and Tim knows that if he accepts, their ‘talk’ won’t involve simply talking.

“No we don’t,” Tim bites back. He is  _ not  _ doing this in front of an audience.

“You need to leave,” Nick says, Tim’s saviour. He’s a man with a commanding voice that no one ever likes to refuse, very reminiscent of Bruce if Tim is honest with himself. Tim is just happy that he isn’t Nick’s intern.

Of course, where Bruce is concerned, Jason is everything but compliant. “You need to fuck off,” Jason says. He must ultimately realise that this isn’t the place to potentially beat the crap out of Tim and/or yell about murder, but unfortunately for Tim, Tim isn’t the only one who has started to figure out how the other person works. Tim knows what Jason is expecting him to do and he is loathe to meet those expectations, but he does it anyway.

An older, haggard man Tim knows vaguely as Martin is reaching for the phone and Tim jumps up. “Fine, fine, everyone calm down. Let’s just take this outside.” Nick narrows his eyes at Tim as Martin cradles the phone in his hand uncertainly.

“Are you sure?” Shawna asks, speaking up from where she has paused in reaching for the pizza slice in front of her.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Just some family issues,” Tim responds, and if that isn’t the understatement of the century then he doesn’t know what is. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Everyone stares at him as he walks by and he wishes he could pretend that it doesn’t bother him. At least Jason doesn’t look triumphant when Tim shuts the door behind him and strides determinedly towards the exit of the hospital. If he did, Tim would have probably kicked him in the balls no matter who was there as witness.

They make it out into an alley and the door has hardly shut when Tim blurts, “How  _ dare you.” _

Jason is at his back. Tim isn’t facing him until Jason grabs him by the arm and yanks him around. His hand isn’t on him for more than a second, but Tim still feels a low simmering pot of rage flare at the feeling of someone else manhandling him and takes a few steps back, drawing himself up to his full height. It isn’t much compared to Jason’s, but it’s the thought that counts.

_ “Me?”  _ Jason scoffs incredulously.

“Yes,  _ you.”  _ Tim steps forward again, adrenaline thrumming through his veins with no outlet except his emotions. “Why are you here, Jason? What’s the point? I thought I made it pretty clear that whatever we were doing is  _ done.  _ Our partnership, our friendship, whatever you want to call it is  _ over.  _ You clearly didn’t think very highly of it if you decided to break it the first opportunity you got. You have no place here.”

“First opportunity?” Jason exclaims. “Fuck you! I followed your kid gloves for _months._ You think you’re all high and mighty, you save lives and shit, but you think I don’t? What the fuck did you want me to do? I already tossed him around, and he took it as a threat from the person you were supposed to _protect._ If I offed him to begin with, _your_ patient would still be alive. I wasn’t gonna make that same mistake twice, why would you?”

“Before, it wasn’t going to reach the police! A murder case  _ does.  _ You didn’t have to do anything! You didn’t have to hurt anyone! He would have been locked up by Monday! You think you save lives? What does that make you, a hero? You know what you really are?” Tim doesn’t stop to breathe. In hindsight, maybe he’s finally feeling a piece of how Jason feels on a daily basis, during all those times when he comes across as a loose cannon and Tim can’t help but think that if he just took a deep breath and paid better attention to the words coming out of his mouth then maybe he wouldn’t be so alone. “You’re  _ selfish.  _ You follow guidelines only when they suit you, and then go off and do what you want when you want, when you decide that doing the right thing is  _ just too hard.  _ I’m a doctor! Did you take one second to think about the fact that now I’m an  _ accomplice to murder?  _ I made a vow to save lives and now I’ve taken them because you decided you’re above basic rules! That you’re somehow  _ above  _ basic human  _ decency.” _

“What makes you think you know anything--” Jason erupts, his posture deathly still while listening to Tim go off but now shocked into action. He stalks forward, his hand twitching up, to grab him or push him he doesn’t know, but Tim refuses to give him ground.

“This has never been about saving lives for you!” Tim interrupts. Normally he would never condone that, Damian does it to him enough and there’s nothing that makes his temper creep up more, but he doesn’t think he can handle letting Jason get in a word edgewise. If he does, Jason will let his own words fire him up, push him into violence, if Tim hasn’t done that himself already. As much as Tim wants to punch him, god does he want to, resorting to fists will have Tim walking back into that building black and blue and the last thing he needs is questions. “You’re taking out what was done to you on everyone else. This isn’t justice, it’s  _ revenge, _ you self-centered asshole! And don’t you dare even _ think  _ about touching me,” Tim spits as he sidesteps right as Jason’s arm jerks forward. “Or are you incapable of facing your problems without fists?”

Silence. Jason’s face isn’t stone hard like Bruce or Tim or even Dick’s when they get the full force of someone else’s ire. His face is tense, jaw clenched and lips firmly pressed together but shifty, as if they don’t know which emotion they are allowed to display. His eyes are livid and  _ alive,  _ not distant as the others would make them to disguise feelings that can’t be otherwise hidden. Because Jason can’t hide them, something Tim knows now. He never got the practice of hiding them, never had a reason to, never learned. It’s what makes him different, and it’s what makes him dangerous.

Jason’s throat works, Tim can see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows down his pride and his rage for the moment and closes his eyes, breaths in deeply and lets it all out in a rush. When he opens his eyes again, his jaw shifts as if he’s chewing something in the corner of his mouth and then it quirks up into a forced smirk. “So I’m the selfish one? I’m the one who makes the hard decisions because you Bats can’t step off your throne for one _motherfucking_ ”--he spits the word, letting some of the venom fueling his thoughts be displayed in a curse because everything else he says is low and so tensely restrained--”second to see a little further than the tip of your goddamn nose because that’s the only fucking way to keep your fucking textbook morals.”

He turns around suddenly to pace, his fingers curling and twitching with the need to use them for something. “It sounds fan-fucking-tastic on paper, doesn’t it?” he shouts suddenly, throwing his hands up, before whipping back around to face Tim and pausing, gritting his teeth again. The way he speaks next is caustic and scathing, mocking him in an attempt to belittle him but Tim refuses to submit. “But human nature is a  _ bit  _ different. I guess I can’t blame you. Your life in the lap of luxury throwing money around like candy probably didn’t see much about what’s  _ inside  _ a person instead of what’s in their pockets, but it’s a disgusting sight, lemme tell ya. All dark and twisted and bleeding and there’s nothing that will get rid of that disease in the people just fucked up enough to let it out. I’m the one projecting, but not you. Oh, no, not  _ you.  _ You’re too good, too  _ perfect  _ for that. But you’re too scared of the people that will get left behind, people just like  _ you,  _ am I right?”

The anger is bubbling like boiling water in a pot ready to blow its top and Tim’s foot shifts just enough to let gravel make a tiny sound as he consciously makes an effort not to step back. Jason isn’t stepping towards him, though. No intimidation other than his words.

“You’re terrified of leaving someone alone, without anyone. But you’re a little fucked up too, Timmy. Because in that sick head of yours, you’d rather someone have a criminal as a father, mother, husband, or wife, a criminal in your life who will spit and abuse you than to be left alone. Because anything is better than being alone, isn’t it?” Tim gives no answer, so Jason repeats: “ _ Isn’t it?”  _ in a sudden shout that reverberates off the walls around them and makes Tim’s skin prickle, makes him jump. “I’m going to tell you something, and you better listen real fuckin’ close because I’m only telling it once.”

He does come forward now, gets close into Tim’s space and Tim isn’t realising what he himself is doing until his back hits the wall and Jason’s bigger frame is boxing him in. Tim has the urge to crouch and make himself smaller, a part inside of him warring with him screaming at him to fight back and make himself bigger instead, but this close to Jason’s face and Tim remembers something he once learned in a psychology textbook, and it makes him want to laugh because isn’t that so  _ ironic. _

Strong emotions are often a cover. People lash out in defense, turn it to the offensive because that’s when they’re in control. That’s when they feel stabilised. Tim isn’t this easily intimidated. He rises up to his full height and squares his shoulders, looks back at Jason and Jason pauses, stares back at him as Tim forces himself to let go of what he’s feeling, just for now, just like he does at social events, putting all that he’s learned from years in this life and the years before into erasing the anger in his eyes because if he knows anything of Jason, then Tim’s own anger is baiting Jason’s and slowly drawing it out.

He doesn’t know what emotion he put there instead. It’s not blank, but he can’t tell what Jason reads. It’s something, though. It’s something that sags Jason’s shoulders just the miniscule amount and makes him sad. It causes Jason to bring his head back, take his palms away from the brick around Tim’s shoulders and reign himself in. The emotion on Jason’s face now might be something like hurt if that weren’t too vulnerable for anyone in his line of work to show. “Maybe that guy would’ve been put to life behind bars. And maybe that woman would’ve been able to get a divorce, move away, put all this shit behind her. Everything you want, everything that’s on your list of options for so-called ‘acceptable outcomes’. But she couldn’t. Ever met a corrupted cop? A dirty, motherfucking excuse for a piece of justice that has just enough position to cover just about everything and get out of jail from anything? We don’t really run out in this good ol’ city of ours. David Rodriguez, 12th precinct, manipulative and abusive and raping bastard with one recently-deceased wife and an 11 year old little girl. Honours in her class judging by those little certificates they had on the wall.” Jason’s fist suddenly crashes into the brick wall beside Tim’s head. He doesn’t see it coming, but he can’t tell if that’s just how Jason is -- sporadic, unpredictable with barely contained rage, or all these years have made Tim finally lose his touch. He doesn’t talk for many moments, just breathes. His fist turns into a palm that remains on the wall as he spits, “You’re just fucked up enough to think having a father like that is better than none at all, and I might be just fucked up enough to agree that putting anyone into the system might be just as bad, but that’s chance vs. certainty. If you were willing to leave a man like  _ that  _ with a girl who looks just like her mother, then you’re no hero at all. And if I’m not one either, well, then I guess you’re just a little more like me than you thought.”

He turns away, starts stalking out of the alley, and Tim remains staring at the far wall. He pauses, though, right at the entrance, and adds: “Unlike you, though, at least I make sure people  _ stay  _ safe. Funny, it’s almost like communism. Great idea on paper, but you’ve really got to live it to realise that it’s never gonna fucking work."


End file.
